Internet Digest: Bigbasket, Mswipe, OYO, ShareChat, & more

Bigbasket signs 3-year deal with SourceEzy

Online grocer Bigbasket has signed a 3-year deal with SourceEzy Technologies Pvt. Ltd, an e-procurement software and consulting firm to save over Rs 100 crore in the next 3 years. The contract will comprise the entire e-procurement requirement of the company including Capital Expenditure, Operational Expenditure, and Services. SourceEzy’s software will capture internal requisitions, send out requests for product information and quotations, conduct e-auctions and send out online purchase orders to Bigbasket’s vendors. Deepak Ramesh, Founder and Managing Director of SourceEzy claims that use of their software generates an upward saving of 10% on their procurement exercise in the next 12 months. Bigbasket claims that it has surpassed the 60,000 daily orders mark and crossed the 6 million customers mark recently.

ONN Bikes Raises Pre-Series A round of funding of Rs 4.5cr

ONN Bikes, a Mumbai-based self-drive bike rental startup has raised pre-Series A funding of Rs 4.5 crore from Venture Catalysts and existing investor Z Nation Lab and JITO Angels. Launched in November 2016, ONN Bikes let individuals or businesses to rent or lease bikes. The startup will use the fresh capital to strengthen its technology base, increase the fleet size, expand to more cities, and promote its franchise model. It said that it will also add electric two-wheelers to its fleet in coming months. ONN Bikes claims to have clients like Ola, Uber, and Swiggy. The company currently operates in 5 states in India and earlier raised two seed rounds from Z Nation Lab and Grace Capital Ventures.

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ShareChat appoints new Chief Business Officer

Bangalore-based Indic-language social networking app ShareChat has appointed Sunil Kamath as its new chief business officer, reports The Economic Times. Kamath will help the company to grow its user base and strengthen its product marketing, business partnerships, and international expansion. Prior to his appointment at the company, Kamath worked with Opera Software for seven years on various senior positions. He has also worked with startups like OnMobile and Obopay before that.

Digital payments company Mswipe Technologies in partnership with Mastercard has announced the launch digital merchant onboarding platfrom which will allow merchants to acquire card swipe machines without paperwork. The process for acquiring merchants for POS terminals needed paper-based KYC before, and used to take three days or so for the same. The company claims that this platform reduces merchant’s on-boarding time from 3 days to 30 minutes, while banks usually take around 7 to 10 days. This will enhance Mswipe’s ability to meet regulatory and KYC guidelines while acquiring merchants and reduce on-boarding risk. The platform, which digitally validates and authenticate KYC documents has been developed by Bangalore-based start-up Signzy.

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Jugnoo expands its auto-hailing service in Itanagar

Hyperlocal delivery and on-demand startup Jugnoo has expanded its auto hailing services in North Eastern part of the country starting with Itanagar. Currently, Jugnoo is operational in 30 cities across India with a focus on tier II and tier III cities where the distances are shorter and people rely more on public transport mode. Founded in 2014, Jugnoo is essentially logistics, last-mile delivery, and auto rickshaw aggregation company, which has expanded its business into different verticals in last three year into on-demand and hyper-local space.

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OYO to confirm bookings via WhatsApp

OYO users will now be able to receive their booking confirmations on WhatsApp. The users will also receive navigation details of their hotels via WhatsApp. How does it work? Once a booking is created, the WhatsApp enterprise solution integration will allow OYO to send a confirmation message through WhatsApp, through OYO’s verified profile. In case of connectivity issues, OYO will further notify the guests through SMS, the company clarified in its statement. Users who do not use WhatsApp will receive notifications through SMS and email.